Champagne is my car. She's a gold/champagne coloured 1990 Nissan Maxima. It's the first car I've ever owned outright. Paid for with all my own money and not shared with anyone else.

I was going to just hop out over lunch to get a one month insurance policy. I found out that I couldn't do that. The shortest policy I can take out is 3 months. Fine. But I have to get AirCare certified first.

*ahem* I haven't driven my car in about two months. It's been sitting in an outdoor car port under an Olympic calibre spitting cherry tree. It was pretty disgusting with bird doot and cherry gunk baked onto the car. I drove it to the $12 hand car wash and that gave the engine a bit of a run before AirCare as well.

So, it turned out to be a three hour lunch to get the car washed, go sit in line at the AirCare Inspection Centre, pay, wait for them to measure my car fart, then go back and get my insurance.

Why am I doing this? Husband Guy's car failed AirCare. It's a 1999 Acura 1.6EL. Umm... yeah, I'll wait for you to pick your jaw back up from the floor.

Doo-dee doo-dee doo... *file and buff nails*

Got your jaw back on straight? Okay. By all accounts, a car made in 1999 and that's been taken in for maintenance twice a year should ABSO-FARKING-LUTELY NOT be failing AirCare. But anyway, it needs to be fixed at an AirCare Certified Repair Centre. There are no Acura repair centres that are authorized to do AirCare repairs. So, Flagpole is going to a Honda repair shop tomorrow.

I think we're going to hold off on raising hell with Acura for the moment.

We live close-ish to work - I think it's about ~15 km (~10 mi), so the short distance twice a day might be causing engine buildup. As well, we almost exclusively use 87 octane gas which, apparently, could be a problem. We didn't think it was necessary to use a higher octane.

I also don't hear any other 1.6EL owners screaming blue murder about not passing AirCare, so we'll see what the Honda shop says.

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He tested it twice. Before the second time, he ran the tank down. He filled it with 94 octane and ran it around the freeways. He also over-pumped his tires a little. When he went to test again, he made sure not to shut down the engine before it was his turn so that the engine would be warm.

Still failed.

I didn't know about the build-up remover though. I'll tell him about it, thanks =)